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Keycloak📜

Overview📜

Keycloak provides open source identity and access management for modern applications and services. This document will cover the architectural touchpoints for the Big Bang Keycloak package, which has been extended to include customizable registration and group segmentation.

Keycloak Architecture📜

graph LR

  urlkc(Keycloak URL) -->|HTTPS| ig
  urlpr(Prometheus URL) -->|HTTPS| ig

  subgraph "Keycloak Ingress"
    ig(Gateway) -->|TLS Passthrough| servkc{{"Service<BR>Keycloak"}}
    ig(Gateway) -->|HTTP| servpr{{"Service<BR>Prometheus"}}
  end

  subgraph "Monitoring"
    servpr --> prom(Prometheus)
    prom(Prometheus) --> monitor
    monitor(Service Monitor) --> servkc
  end

  subgraph "Keycloak Cluster"
    servkc <--> pod0("Keycloak Pod 0")
    servkc <--> pod1("Keycloak Pod 1")
  end

  subgraph "Database"
    pod0 --> db[(Keycloak DB)]
    pod1 --> db[(Keycloak DB)]
  end

Integration w/ Big Bang📜

Big Bang’s integration with Keycloak requires special considerations and configuration compared to other applications. This document will help you get it setup correctly.

Keycloak with Other Apps📜

Due to the sensitivity of Keycloak, Big Bang does not support deploying KeyCloak and any other add-ons. But, Keycloak can be deployed with the core Big Bang applications (e.g. Istio, Monitoring, Logging). The URL to access these core apps is under the admin subdomain to avoid a problem with overlapping certificates. For example, in the bigbang.dev domain, to access Prometheus, you would go to https://prometheus.admin.bigbang.dev. Keycloak would still be accessed at https://keycloak.bigbang.dev.

The admin subdomain is only used when Keycloak is enabled

Keycloak’s Custom Image📜

The upstream Keycloak Helm chart is customized for use in Platform One. It contains the following modifications from a standard Keycloak deployment:

  • Customized Platform One registration plugin

Additional customization can be added through values. For example:

addons:
  keycloak:
    # Setup TLS key pair
    # An alternative to this is to create a secret namged `tlskey` and `tlscert` using Kustomize in the customer template.  Then use the volume and volumemount configuration below to mount the files.  In this case, the `ingress.key` and `ingress.cert` would be left blank.
    ingress:
      key: |-
        {insert keycloak TLS key}
      cert: |-
        {insert keycloak TLS cert}
    values:
      secrets:
        # The `env` secret is used to add environmental variables to the keycloak pod
        env:
          stringData:
            # Keycloak will use the `customreg.yaml` for configuring the custom registration process.
            CUSTOM_REGISTRATION_CONFIG: /opt/jboss/keycloak/customreg.yaml
            # Keycloak will load a custom realm defined in `realm.json`
            KEYCLOAK_IMPORT: /opt/jboss/keycloak/realm.json
            # Keycloak will load a custom set of certificate authorities
            X509_CA_BUNDLE: /etc/x509/https/cas.pem
        # The `certauthority` secret holds the certificate authority keys.
        # Using the customer template, kustomize could be used to create the secret instead of using the keycloak chart via values
        certauthority:
          stringData:
            cas.pem: |-
              {insert CAS.PEM content}
        # The `customreg` secret holds the configuration for customer registration.
        # Using the customer template, kustomize could be used to create the secret instead of using the keycloak chart via values
        customreg:
          stringData:
            customreg.yaml: |-
              {insert customreg.yaml content}
        # The `realm` secret holds the custom realm configuration.
        # Using the customer template, kustomize could be used to create the secret instead of using the keycloak chart via values
        realm:
          stringData:
            realm.json: |-
              {insert realm.json content}
      # Create volumes for each secret above
      extraVolumes: |-
        - name: certauthority
          secret:
            secretName: {{ include "keycloak.fullname" . }}-certauthority
        - name: customreg
          secret:
            secretName: {{ include "keycloak.fullname" . }}-customreg
        - name: realm
          secret:
            secretName: {{ include "keycloak.fullname" . }}-realm
      # Volume mount each volume in the appropriate location
      extraVolumeMounts: |-
        - name: certauthority
          mountPath: /etc/x509/https/cas.pem
          subPath: cas.pem
          readOnly: true
        - name: customreg
          mountPath: /opt/jboss/keycloak/customreg.yaml
          subPath: customreg.yaml
          readOnly: true
        - name: realm
          mountPath: /opt/jboss/keycloak/realm.json
          subPath: realm.json
          readOnly: true

Keycloak Admin password📜

Big Bang creates a default admin user for logging into the admin console. To override the default admin credentials in Keycloak, set the following in Big Bang’s values.yaml:

addons:
  keycloak:
    values:
      secrets:
        credentials:
          stringData:
            adminuser: your_admin_username
            password: your_admin_password

Keycloak TLS📜

To properly configure Keycloak TLS, you must provide Keycloak a certificate in addons.keycloak.ingress that does not overlap with any TLS terminated app certificate. See the details for further information on why this is a problem.

In the Big Bang implementation, core apps use the admin subdomain. You need two wildcard SAN certificates, one for *.admin.yourdomain and one for *.yourdomain for this implementation. The *.admin.yourdomain cert goes into istio.ingress and the *.yourdomain cert goes into addons.keycloak.ingress.

In the following example for Big Bang, we provide a certificate for *.admin.bigbang.dev to TLS terminated apps and a *.bigbang.dev certificate to Keycloak.

hostname: bigbang.dev
istio:
  ingress:
    key: |-
      <Private Key for *.admin.bigbang.dev>
    cert: |-
      <Certificate for *.admin.bigbang.dev>
addons:
  keycloak:
    enabled: true
    ingress:
      key: |-
        <Private key for *.bigbang.dev>
      cert: |-
        <Certificate for *.bigbang.dev>

Certificate Overlap Problem📜

This problem automatically worked around by Big Bang if you have non-overlapping certificates as recommended above. Youc an skip this section unless you want the gritty details.

Modern browsers will reuse established TLS connections when the destination’s IP and port are the same and the current certificate is valid. See the HTTP/2 spec for details. If our cluster has a single load balancer and listens on port 443 for multiple apps, then the IP address and port for all apps in the cluster will be the same from the browser’s point of view. Normally, this isn’t a problem because Big Bang uses TLS termination for all applications. The encryption occurs between Istio and the browser no matter which hostname you use, so the connection can be reused without problems.

With Keycloak, we need to passthrough TLS rather than terminate it at Istio. If we have other apps, like Kiali, that are TLS terminated, Istio needs two server entries in its Gateway to passthrough TLS for hosts matching keycloak.bigbang.dev and to terminate TLS for other hosts. If the certificate used for TLS is valid for both Keycloak and other apps (e.g. the cert includes a SAN of *.bigbang.dev), then the browser thinks it can reuse connections between the applications (the IP, port, and cert are the same). If you access a TLS terminated app first (e.g. kiali.bigbang.dev), then try to access keycloak.bigbang.dev, the browser tries to reuse the connection to the terminated app, resulting in a data leak to the terminated app and a 404 error in the browser. Istio is supposed to handle this situation, but does not.

To workaround this situation, you have to isolate the applications by IP, port, or certificate so the browser will not reuse the connection between them. You can use external load balancers or different ingress ports to create unique IPs or ports for the applications. Or you can create non-overlapping certs for the applications. This does not prevent you from using wildcard certs, since you could have one cert for *.bigbang.dev and another for *.admin.bigbang.dev that don’t overlap. Alternatively, you can create one cert for kiali.bigbang.dev and other TLS terminated apps and another cert for keycloak.bigbang.dev.

All of the core and addon apps are TLS terminated except Keycloak.

Big Bang Touchpoints📜

GUI📜

Keycloak has two main end point URLs: https://keycloak.bigbang.dev for authentication. https://keycloak.bigbang.dev/auth/admin for administration.

The bigbang.dev domain name can be customized by setting the hostname in values.yaml

Database📜

An external shared database is required for Keycloak operation in production. It should be setup according to the Keycloak database configuration documentation.

For development ad test, a Postgres database is provided inside the cluster. This should NOT be used in production.

The following values can be customized in values.yaml to connect to your external database:

addons:
  keycloak:
    database:
      host: mydb.mydomain.com
      type: postgres
      port: 5432
      database: keycloak
      username: kcuser
      password: p@ssw0rd

Logging📜

Logging is automatic for Keycloak when the Logging package is enabled in Big Bang. Fluentbit captures the logs and ships them to Elastic.

Monitoring📜

When the Monitoring package is enabled, Big Bang will turn on Keycloak’s production of Prometheus metrics and setup a Service Monitor to scrape those metrics. By default, metrics for the datasources (db), undertow (http), and jgroup subsystems are enabled.

Health Checks📜

Liveness and readiness probes are included in the Keycloak Helm chart for all deployments. The probes check the endpoint at /auth/realm/master/ on port 8080 of the pods. This means the probes will still succeed even if you have an invalid certificate loaded into Keycloak.

If you wish to adjust the probes, you can override the values in values.yaml:

addons:
  keycloak:
    values:
      livenessProbe: |
        httpGet:
          path: /auth/realms/master
          port: http
          scheme: HTTP
        initialDelaySeconds: 120
        failureThreshold: 15
        periodSeconds: 15
      readinessProbe: |
        httpGet:
          path: /auth/realms/master
          port: http
          scheme: HTTP
        initialDelaySeconds: 120
        failureThreshold: 15
        timeoutSeconds: 2

Licensing📜

Keycloak is available under the Apache License 2.0 for free.

High Availability📜

By default Big Bang deploys Keycloak with two replicas in a high availability cluster configuration. It is already configured to support cache sharing, anti-affinity, failovers, and rolling updates. If you wish to increase or decrease the number of replicas you must first make sure you are pointed to an external database, and then the replicas can be increased, all of which can be set in values.yaml:

addons:
  keycloak:
    database:
      host: ""
      type: ""
      port: ""
      database: ""
      username: ""
      password: "in-encrypted-values"
    values:
      replicas: 3

The Keycloak package also comes with a HorizontalPodAutoscaler resource which can be enabled. Enabling the HPA will overwrite the replicas key shown above:

addons:
  keycloak:
    values:
      autoscaling:
        enabled: true
        minReplicas: 2
        maxReplicas: 4

Dependent Packages📜

  • Istio for ingress
  • (Optional) Monitoring for metrics
  • PostgreSQL database (development/test only)
Last update: 2023-10-02 by Christopher O'Connell